New Year with New President

The elections of the president of any country almost always easily turns into the brightest happening of the year. After stepping into 2018th, Finland stepped into the process of presidential elections as well.

According to the current legislation, the election of the president of Finland was held on the fourth Sunday of January – January, 28^th.

 

This year Finland chose a president who is going to lead the country for the next 6 years. The Finns themselves were calling this campaign together with the election race boring and they knew the winner in advance. The current president of Finland, 68-year-old Sauli Niinistö, ran for the second term. In order to get to the ballot papers in a country with a population of 5.5 million people, the candidate had to collect only 20,000 signatures. He needed to get a simple majority of votes in order to win already in the first round. So he did – 62,7% of people voted for Niinistö.

 

Experts argued that it doesn’t matter who will take the second place (by the way, Pekka Haavisto took it with 12,4% of votes) because the outcome of the election was predetermined in advance. Even some of the competitors (and there were 7 of them) openly preferred Niinistö.

 

In addition, Niinistö’s victory can be considered historical in the sense that for the first time after the introduction of direct voting, the presidential elections were limited to one round and saved Finland 10 million euros allocated to municipalities for the proposed second round.

 

Right after the results were announced, the winner was congratulated by the president of Estonia Kersti Kaljulaid through Twitter. The minister of international affairs of Sweden Margot Wallström also congratulated Niinistö, as well as the leaders of other countries.

 

At the inauguration ceremony the president mentioned in his speech that the fight with the change in climate is the main problem for the next couple of years. ‘The truth is that the man will not handle loosing the Earth,’ said Niinistö. He also highlighted the importance of respect towards other people and opinions, which are different from your own.

 

After leading the country for 6 years, Sauli Niinistö is ready to dedicate another 6 years to serving the country again. It can be supposed that the politics towards the other countries, internal and external laws will not change crucially. People know what to expect from the president because they have the experience already.

So, will something change in Finland? We’ll see. Stability of the country is one of the most desirable aspects of development and progress. The country will prosper as long as the citizens will be happy. These two factors are tightening up together and one is not possible without the other.